Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Lots of Support for One Percent!

I was reading an article in Information Week cleverly titled "The OS Mess". The article raises the issue of the technology world becoming flooded with a plethora of different operating systems. I think having a variety of different platforms available is a good thing. Competition stimulates innovation and market growth.

The issue in all of this comes in when you need to obtain support for this variety of operating systems. Having to support more than one platform raises the bar on the level of service needed from IT support staff. Many IT companies appear to be adapting to these changes though. In the same Information Week article they posted a survey of 441 technology professionals from May of this year, asking which platforms they support:

While I don't think it is any surprise that 99% of them offer support for Windows, what I did find interesting is that 35% offer support for an operating system that supposedly has a less than 2% market share. Perhaps Linux users are simply more willing to pay for support? At any rate I found it to be an interesting statistic and I wanted to share.

Why do you think so many offer support for a platform that is supposed to be so under used?

Well, they're IT. A higher percentage of businesses use and know that they're using linux. Many people can use linux as their desktop OS and not know since more people are beginning to think that their browser is their computer.

When I call my ISP or some other service provider and hear that they "only support Windows" I wonder if I've really dialed "customer support" or a branch of Microsoft. When forced, I pretend to open an instance of internet explorer and write down what they tell to type me. When the little game is over, I generally have the information I need. It's been a long time since I've had that unpleasant experience.

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My name is Jeff Hoogland and you've landed on one of my Google pages. I currently work as adjunct faculty teaching mathematics at ITT Technical Institute in Springfield IL. I am a free software advocate and part time code jockey. You can learn more about me from my personal website.

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